5 ms·

> The culture that encourages police officers to engage their weapons before gathering information promotes the mind-set that nothing, including citizen safety,

by gokhan 11y ago

> The culture that encourages police officers to engage their weapons before gathering information promotes the mind-set that nothing, including citizen safety, is more important than officers’ personal security. This seems like the thing police forces need to change in order to fix the situation.

justizin 11y ago
If wishing made it so. The institution of the police is intrinsically corrupt and unbalanced. This has nothing to do with the fact that your neighbor or your Uncle Joe is a police officer and seems like a perfectly nice person, and joined for all the right reasons, their job is not to keep you safe, it is to keep you under control. All of us, collectively. I know it's a big complex discussion to have about, "if we didn't have the police, what would blah blah", but instead of recoiling from fear, it's important to address the facts.
- Qwertious 11y ago
  And yet this is a bigger problem in the USA than in Europe or Australia.
  - Elrac 11y ago
    My German wife says this is (to a large part) a direct consequence of the fact that the US has a much larger population of people with nothing left to lose. Middle class workers working off a mortgage in suburbia are a lot less likely to become violent killers than underprivileged folk who have precious few career options outside of drug dealing in gangs.
    - adventured 11y ago
      That's an incorrect conclusion. Check out the historical murder rate of Appalachia in the US. Extremely high gun ownership, extremely low murder rate. I grew up there, deep in poverty, everyone owned guns, and the murder rate was on par with the best of Europe per 100,000 people. The difference? Cultural. Where I grew up, people simply did not believe in killing each other, period. Desperation was widespread, yet there were no gangs, there were no drive-by shootings.
      - Elrac 11y ago
        Nice try, poor logic. What you call "people [not believing] in killing each other" is a phenomenon that calls for an explanation. I believe that explanation is simply that there's nothing to be gained from killing a desperately poor person. Appalachia (and other poor rural areas) have no gangs because there's no way to make a profit on organized violence. Gangs and the associated violence happen in cities because that's where some of the people, at least, have money that they can spend on drugs or prostitution or simply be robbed of.
        skeolawn 11y ago
        So following that logic, I guess if a "rich" person was to drive through Appalachia they would be inevitably doomed?
        Elrac 11y ago
        That's an absurd extrapolation. Please try to follow along here! I'll repeat it slowly for you: Because there's (in general) little to be gained from robbing people in this area, there are no or few violent street gangs and other forms of organized crime like you'd find in various cities where there's a more colorful mix of rich and poor. Lacking an organized criminal element, Appalachia presents not significantly more (nor less) danger to well-off tourists than any other area where poor people live and a few will -by statistics- be criminals; and considerably less than various cities, certainly various neighborhoods, where robbery and other violent crime are common and more or less an "industry."
      - taejo 11y ago
        That's interesting, given the stereotyped belief that Appalachia is the epicentre of a certain type of murder culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia#Feuds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia#Feuds
pjc50 11y ago
The thing is, military forces are bound by international treaties to restrict violence against civilians. Police are not. Normally domestic politics in a free country would regard the random deaths of civilians as a bad thing, but the US racial divide means that enough white people regard black people being shot by the police as a positive outcome rather than a negative one.
- an_ko 11y ago
  > enough white people regard black people being shot by the police as a positive outcome rather than a negative one Could you elaborate? "Enough" for what?
  - aikah 11y ago
    black people = thugs in most white people's minds. Of course there is always one black guy they like,"but he's different hey ?"...
    - an_ko 11y ago
      [citation needed]
      - DanBC 11y ago
        https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
        an_ko 11y ago
        While possibly helpful for assessing one's own biases, that site seems to provide no collective stats, and that's what's in question here.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    "Enough" in that you have people on HN saying pretty much that most of the black people who get shot and killed by police deserved it and that black people are stupid violent criminals so it's no wonder they get killed so often, and that if only they were docile and compliant in the face of police harassment they wouldn't get shot so much. It's fucking weird seeing that stuff on HN, and it's scary to think how those thoughts look in other less restricted forums. It's the 21st centuary and there's only just a US president prepared to say "black lives matter". There have been a string of killings by police of innocent black people, and juries refuse to convict.

by gokhan 11y ago

justizin 11y ago

If wishing made it so. The institution of the police is intrinsically corrupt and unbalanced. This has nothing to do with the fact that your neighbor or your Uncle Joe is a police officer and seems like a perfectly nice person, and joined for all the right reasons, their job is not to keep you safe, it is to keep you under control. All of us, collectively. I know it's a big complex discussion to have about, "if we didn't have the police, what would blah blah", but instead of recoiling from fear, it's important to address the facts.

Qwertious 11y ago
And yet this is a bigger problem in the USA than in Europe or Australia.
- Elrac 11y ago
  My German wife says this is (to a large part) a direct consequence of the fact that the US has a much larger population of people with nothing left to lose. Middle class workers working off a mortgage in suburbia are a lot less likely to become violent killers than underprivileged folk who have precious few career options outside of drug dealing in gangs.
  - adventured 11y ago
    That's an incorrect conclusion. Check out the historical murder rate of Appalachia in the US. Extremely high gun ownership, extremely low murder rate. I grew up there, deep in poverty, everyone owned guns, and the murder rate was on par with the best of Europe per 100,000 people. The difference? Cultural. Where I grew up, people simply did not believe in killing each other, period. Desperation was widespread, yet there were no gangs, there were no drive-by shootings.
    - Elrac 11y ago
      Nice try, poor logic. What you call "people [not believing] in killing each other" is a phenomenon that calls for an explanation. I believe that explanation is simply that there's nothing to be gained from killing a desperately poor person. Appalachia (and other poor rural areas) have no gangs because there's no way to make a profit on organized violence. Gangs and the associated violence happen in cities because that's where some of the people, at least, have money that they can spend on drugs or prostitution or simply be robbed of.
      - skeolawn 11y ago
        So following that logic, I guess if a "rich" person was to drive through Appalachia they would be inevitably doomed?
        Elrac 11y ago
        That's an absurd extrapolation. Please try to follow along here! I'll repeat it slowly for you: Because there's (in general) little to be gained from robbing people in this area, there are no or few violent street gangs and other forms of organized crime like you'd find in various cities where there's a more colorful mix of rich and poor. Lacking an organized criminal element, Appalachia presents not significantly more (nor less) danger to well-off tourists than any other area where poor people live and a few will -by statistics- be criminals; and considerably less than various cities, certainly various neighborhoods, where robbery and other violent crime are common and more or less an "industry."
    - taejo 11y ago
      That's interesting, given the stereotyped belief that Appalachia is the epicentre of a certain type of murder culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia#Feuds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia#Feuds

pjc50 11y ago

The thing is, military forces are bound by international treaties to restrict violence against civilians. Police are not. Normally domestic politics in a free country would regard the random deaths of civilians as a bad thing, but the US racial divide means that enough white people regard black people being shot by the police as a positive outcome rather than a negative one.

an_ko 11y ago
> enough white people regard black people being shot by the police as a positive outcome rather than a negative one Could you elaborate? "Enough" for what?
- aikah 11y ago
  black people = thugs in most white people's minds. Of course there is always one black guy they like,"but he's different hey ?"...
  - an_ko 11y ago
    [citation needed]
    - DanBC 11y ago
      https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
      - an_ko 11y ago
        While possibly helpful for assessing one's own biases, that site seems to provide no collective stats, and that's what's in question here.
- DanBC 11y ago
  "Enough" in that you have people on HN saying pretty much that most of the black people who get shot and killed by police deserved it and that black people are stupid violent criminals so it's no wonder they get killed so often, and that if only they were docile and compliant in the face of police harassment they wouldn't get shot so much. It's fucking weird seeing that stuff on HN, and it's scary to think how those thoughts look in other less restricted forums. It's the 21st centuary and there's only just a US president prepared to say "black lives matter". There have been a string of killings by police of innocent black people, and juries refuse to convict.